Yes, for only the second time, I have the opportunity to turn to the Dope for something work related! So please feel free to give me information in dribs and drabs, so’s I have to keep coming back to get the full story.
What I need is a device to faithfully record and play back sound. I wanna spend, say, under $1000, so top-of-the-line calibrated instruments are out of the question, but obviously I’d like to get maximum fidelity for the money (so no old school analog tape recorder). Perhaps I could use some sort of musician’s equipment? You tell me. My needs:
[ul]
[li]Want to record audible range sounds, with max fidelity.[/li][li]Location is temperature-controlled, but there will be oil and crud in the environment.[/li][li]Want to record at least, say, 60 seconds at once. More would be nice.[/li][li]A remote trigger would be nice (but not essential).[/li][li]The ability to download stored sound to a PC for post-processing would be nice (but not essential).[/li][li]Want to lug the recorded sound into a meeting and hit ‘play’ so everyone can enjoy. Again, max fidelity.[/li][li]The ability to make a ‘mix tape’, splicing different sounds together, is highly desirable.[/li][li]Under $1000 in cost.[/li][/ul]
So, what piece or pieces of equipment should I be looking for? General descriptions and/or brand names are welcome.
I would think this would depend on the input type (microphone).
I don’t know of any (decently priced) professional audio equipment that would be resistent to those conditions.
A Yamaha MD4 (Mini-disc 4 track audio recorder) would do this. I think 36 minutes with 4 track recording. More time with less tracks used. 1 track recording would give you 76 minutes.
A MIDI controller could trigger recording for and MD4 mentioned above.
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* The ability to download stored sound to a PC for post-processing would be nice (but not essential). [/quote]
An Aardvark Direct Mix USB3 device would give you excellent recording quality on a PC with recording software (I recommend SoundForge 7.0 - that’s just me).
With the MD4, all you need is RCA cables to a speaker source, and you’re set. The MD4 is also digital recording and sounds great.
I don’t think the MD4 can do this, but maybe it can. It has all kinds of features. But if you’re gonna record to your PC, then SoundForge 7.0 can do this. Of course if you’re using 4 track recording, you can lay a sample down on track 1, then while playing track 1, you can record on track 2 and blend the sounds together later.
I think the Yamaha MD4, the Aardvark Direct Mix USB3, and SoundForge 7.0 would be just under $1000.
Of course I use the Yamaha MD8 and love it so I’m biased (8 track mini-disc recorder). For what you need, you probably don’t need 8 tracks, and the MD4 is cheaper. Someone may come along with better suggestions, this is just mine.
A stereo minidisc recorder would do all except “have a remote trigger”. It would not be able to mix down tracks on its own, but you would buy PC software and transfer the audio to the PC to do that. Minidisc recorders are very easy to use, and even though the recorders are tiny, the audio quality of these Walkman minidisc recorders is very, very close to CD’s–most people casually listening cannot tell the difference between the two. If you go this route, be sure to get one that has a mic jack for doing portable recording! Not a line-in jack. Only two Sony models do now, last I saw–the two most expensive ones.
I would not advise a multitrack MD recorder, unless you positively needed one. One reason is that they need special data disks, not the regular stereo audio blank discs that are relatively common. …Another is that the process of using them is not instinctive–you have to “save” recordings after you have recorded them, or else they are lost. With the stereo Walkmans, it’s obvious: “record” means “record” and “stop” means “stop”, just ike an old audio cassette recorder, and the MD won’t let you accidentally record over anything. It will not record over an existing track. If a disc fills up with tracks, the thing simply stops recording and flashes a message that says “disc full”, until you erase a few tracks, erase the entire disc or put in a disc with space still on it.
Pricewise a stereo MD recorder costs maybe $250. The only other comparable mediums would be a portable audio-CD recorder ($700+) or a portable DAT recorder ($750+). In terms of absolute quality, the DAT is best but they are mechanically unreliable and need regular maintenance. Technician servicing once a year is basically mandatory, or the thing will eat tapes.
A fairly-good mini mic will cost $50 for mono, $80 for stereo. The computer mixing software can be had for 50-$100 at most (or free, depending…).
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I too would suggest getting a portable minidisc recorder. The sound quality is good, the recorder is small, and you can probably get an old line in recorder pretty cheap. www.minidisc.org can help you out, just check out their equipment browser.
Thanks all! Good advice. One question, though: will these disk recorders take any mic input at all? What am I looking for in a mic so’s it would be compatible?
Well, we’re doing R&D work on driveline components for hybrid vehicles. One of the issues here is noise generation. We’re not really specialists in NVH, but we do have some ideas on how to reduce the noise, and a (quick-n-dirty) setup to objectively compare different concepts.
What my boss wants to do, though, is subjectively compare concepts. In other words, record noise from a baseline, then record noise with “concept A” installed. Then we can demonstrate outside of the lab what the difference sounds like. Not really as a scientific comparison, but more as a sanity check that some concept delivering less overall noise actually sounds better.
As far as microphones go, the minidisc Walkmans take miniature high-impedance microphones. There’s a place online named Microphone Madness that sells some pretty good + inexpensive ones. …Which brings to mind one important fact of using mini (high-impedance) microphones: if you use a thin mic cable, than you need to keep it as short as possible, or you should use a preamp that is run to a line-in jack instead of a mini-mic jack. You want a mic cord only 2-3 feet long at most–long enough to isolate the mic from the minidisc recorder noise (some minidisc recorders buzz softly but audibly for five seconds every 35 seconds) but the reason you don’t want it longer is that at the impedance levels these mics work at, high-frequencies experience much greater loss than lower-frequencies in the microphone cable.
There’s two ways to get around that problem, one cheap, one expensive:
…The first (cheap) solution is to make “adaptors” to allow using some sort of thicker cabling. The upshot here is that you mentioned a hybrid vehicle, and so you would want to use shielded cable, where normally for recording music, that isn’t much of a concern–but this could still be a relatively cheap improvement to try.
…The second more-expensive way is to spend another hundred or two dollars and get a portable 9-volt mic preamp. Then you hook your mic right into the preamp, and then you can connect the preamp to the minidisc’s line-in jack with a longer thin cord without nearly as much signal loss. Microphone Madness sells all the mics and cables, as well as the portable preamps.
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If you go for the portable CD or DAT, then they will have XLR input connectors, and then you would need to get an XLR (“stage”-type) microphone–which still isn’t real expensive, there are good ones for <$100. -And I thinks the DAT has both XLR and mini-mic jacks. DAT tapes cost like $40 each, IIRC :eek: (minidisks cost $2!).
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What you’re talking about amounts to scientific research to measure sound differences, but forget high end calibrated equipment? First of all, you need calibration equiipment. IMO you cannot spend under a thousand bucks and reliably accomplish your task.
If all you want is some rough idea of relative loudness, just use any old PC microphone, and a decent computer sound system - maybe a Boston Acoustic system. Your IS department probably has a stash of stereo speakers somewhere – try them. IOW, I wouldn’t spend much on mikes or speakers, I’d look for sofware with a virtual variable scale Vu meter and oscilloscope… Ultimately, you’ll need to rely on a visual readout of the amplitude and frequwncy changes from one recording to the next.
But I have to say that there are a lot of uncontrolled parts of that path, and if an experimenal measuring system can’t be fully calibrated, the test cannot be accurately repeated with any other set of ewuipment,
One of the things you might want to be careful about is that many MD recorders have built-in compressors that cannot be turned off or adjusted. This means that although they will give you very satisfactory sound quality, timbre-wise, they are not accurate amplitude-wise. You won’t be able to use them to compare the relative loudness of two sound environments.
